In an effort to increase the usability and highlight the user-interactivity features of Libertarian Papers, we have made some changes to the home page:

Content is now organized by section.

RSS and iTunes icons appear next to their respective section headers for increased prominence.

Content lists appear in a more compact summary format.

All content is more prominently “dated for freshness.”

In addition to linked section headers, tabs at the end of each section alert the reader to additional content.

The “Latest Comments” section has been added to make this particular user-interactivity feature more prominent. Hopefully this will encourage more frequent discussion of the articles contained on this site.

Clicking on a commenter’s screen name will lead the reader directly to the contributed comment.

Clicking on a title in this section will lead the reader to the article, podcast or news item.

See the accompanying full-size annotated screenshot (PNG, ~179KB) to see the above decsription of the revisions in context.

We hope that this revision proves beneficial to all existing and future readers. Please let us know of any display issues by using the comment box below.

In just three months, this journal has published 25 great papers, and been indexed in a number of leading services. It has quickly become a key journal of libertarian scholarship.

Since 2002, the O.P. Alford III Prize in Libertarian Scholarship, a bi-annual $1000 prize, has been awarded to the paper published in the preceding two-year period that best advances libertarian scholarship. The award was named for a great entrepreneur, O.P. Alford III, whose friendship to the Mises Institute and dedication to the cause of liberty will not be forgotten.

I am pleased to announce that the Mises Institute has generously decided to grant the $1000 Alford prize annually–instead of every other year–to the article published in Libertarian Papers that best advances libertarian scholarship. The next such prize will be awarded at the Austrian Scholars Conference 2010 to the best article from Libertarian Papers published in 2009, as chosen by the journal’s Editor and Editoral Board.

Interesting post on orgtheory.net, broadening the scientific conversation, which discusses “some interesting advances in how some journals and online media are broadening the scientific conversation.” Among some developments lauded by this post: fostering dialogue online and in print; having open access; podcasting the journal’s articles; and doing “a great job of packaging things online”.

Here at Libertarian Papers, we are striving to be part of this process.

In an effort to make discussions easier to follow, LibertarianPapers.org now features AJAX-enabled threaded comments. Simply click the ‘Reply to this comment” link immediately following a comment that you want to address directly, and the comment entry form will appear immediately underneath. Please note that you will need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser to take full advantage of this functionality.

If you wish to start an unrelated discussion, use the comment entry form found at the bottom of each page.

Also, if a discussion thread becomes particularly large, it will be separated into multiple pages to make the discussion more manageable. (Currently, twenty comments are displayed per page.)

If you find any bugs, please let me know in the comment box or send e-mail to aristotle@mises.com. Thanks for your help and participation.

For those who like paper, Libertarian Papers will be offered in a Print Archive version, at cost, via print-on-demand. Our first print archive is Vol. 1 (2009), Part 1: Articles 1-17. It’s available for $10 (our cost), from Lulu. It may be ordered from our Print Archive page.